Second Chances
by MMB
Summary: Miss Parker makes a mistake and pays the price


Title - Second Chances  
Author - MMB   
Fandom - the Pretender/Sydney  
Rating - PG-13  
Category - Angst   
Spoilers - perhaps a few  
Timeline - after IOTH  
Keywords - MPSA   
Summary - Miss Parker makes a mistake, and pays the price  
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. I'm just borrowing them for a bit. Please don't kill me...  
  
  
Second Chances  
by MMB  
  
Miss Parker slumped through her front door and sighed as she locked it after herself and then tossed down her keys carelessly on the little stand near the door. She shrugged the coat from her shoulders and hung it on the coat rack, then headed into her living room towards the liquor cabinet. Months had gone by since last she had felt the need to take up a glass, but the events of today had stripped her of all her other defenses save this last one. Maybe she'd be able to forget for a while. Not long enough, but at least for a bit.  
  
Sydney was right - and she knew she'd deserved every last accusation the psychiatrist had leveled at her in the hospital while waiting for news on Broots' condition. She HAD been blinded by frustration, and she HAD been careless - and now Broots had paid the price for her rashness. He was lucky he hadn't broken his neck in the tumble down the stairwell that morning, although his left leg had been shattered badly enough to require surgery. All because she had tried to push him out of her way to move past him, and he'd slipped on freshly waxed linoleum at the head of the staircase as the result. It didn't matter that Jarod had once more managed to elude them, or that there was a sweeper with an intact rump rather than a freshly-reamed orifice therein for letting the Pretender slip through his fingers. It didn't matter that Mr. Raines had seen fit to find her at fault for Jarod's escape, as if she'd contributed to it deliberately, and then harangued her at length for the blunder.  
  
What mattered was the wide-eyed agony in her computer tech's eyes as he lay at the bottom of the stairs screaming. What mattered was the coldness in Sydney's voice as he had restrained her when she would have taken it upon herself to fetch Debbie to the hospital and break the news to the girl, but given Sam the task. What mattered was the look of accusation on Debbie's face when she heard the details of her father's accident. What mattered was that neither Syd nor Debbie would even consider her offer to house Debbie while Broots was laid up in the hospital.   
  
But in the end, what had mattered most was the short visit Sydney had made to her office late that afternoon. Jarod, evidently, had decided that with Broots' fall, enough was enough. He had called the psychiatrist first to check on Broots' condition, and then to inform him that he was through with a game that got innocents hurt - and to bid the older man goodbye. The older man had come to calmly inform her that, if Jarod's threat were real, their collaboration was virtually over - and that, considering everything, it was fine by him. When he had left, he'd left a cold and uncaring final goodbye of his own echoing in her ears - and not given her a single backward glance.  
  
In the space of one short day, starting with a single act of unthinking carelessness and self-absorption, she had managed to injure, alienate, anger and/or drive away everyone in her life who still meant a damn to her. She couldn't even come up with a single justification to lift an iota of blame from her own mind. As she splashed a liberal portion of bourbon into the bottom of an old-fashioned glass, she realized that the one person who had loved her best as a child would have been disappointed in her as well. That thought brought the first tear, and accompanied the first healthy slug of the burning liquid.  
  
Suddenly the Parker name and mystique weren't enough to protect her from the consequences of her actions. As her mother's daughter, it was obvious she was a dismal failure. And as her father's daughter - regardless of whether she wanted to consider Mr. Parker or Mr. Raines as her parent - she had never approached the level of disdain for others to be immune from emotions or ethics. With that thought, she dumped the rest of that helping of bourbon down her throat, feeling it begin to burn and roil her ulcer as she tipped the bottle over the glass and gave herself another helping at least as plenteous as the last.  
  
And there was another unopened bottle in the cabinet when this one was gone.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Broots smiled bravely despite his pale face as Debbie and Sydney came into his hospital room. Debbie looked as if she'd been crying, and Sydney had that tight look that the computer tech knew came from his holding his stronger emotions tightly in check. "Hey there!" he greeted them with a bravado that came as much from a pain pill as from the heart. "Come to sign the cast?"  
  
He opened his arms to embrace his daughter, then shook hands with Sydney. "How are you doing, Daddy?" Debbie asked anxiously.  
  
"Still a little woozy from the anesthesia," he admitted with a wry look, "but glad I'm on the good stuff for the leg at the moment." He blinked and looked up at Sydney expectantly. "Miss Parker going to come by later?"  
  
Sydney sniffed in patent disapproval. "Do you really want her to?" he asked, his tone conveying very clearly how much he disagreed with that possibility. "After all she's done to you already?"  
  
"What do you mean?" the computer tech asked, looking back and forth from his daughter's face to his friend's with no small amount of confusion.   
  
"Daddy," Debbie began, glancing up at Sydney for support, "she's the reason you're here. She pushed you down those stairs..."  
  
"Naw," Broots shook his head. "Not really. I saw her coming. I was moving out of her way and would have made it too, but I'd already started to slip by the time she pushed at me. Actually, if she HADN'T have shoved me the way she did, I wouldn't have bounced off the side of the stairwell - and considering I was falling straight backwards, I have a nasty hunch I would probably have broken my neck, and not just my leg." He ran a hand over his bald pate thoughtfully. "C'mon, you guys, give her a little credit. She may be thoughtless at times, but she's never been deliberately destructive."  
  
"That's not what the rest of us saw," Sydney informed his friend.  
  
"That may not be what you THINK you saw, but I'm telling you it's the God's-honest truth, Syd. I was the closest to the action, so I ought to know..." Broots smiled at his daughter and patted her hand. "So, are you going over to her place when you leave here?"  
  
Debbie shook her head with wide eyes. "I was mad at her for hurting you. I told her I didn't want to stay with her ever again - that I'd rather be with Sydney or Sam."  
  
"Debbie!"  
  
"I meant it, Daddy! I thought she'd hurt you."  
  
Broots' ice-blue eyes sought out his psychiatrist friend. "Syd?"  
  
Sydney looked down. "I was pretty hard on her myself," the older man admitted. "Especially after Jarod's call to tell me that we can forget getting any more clues on his whereabouts. He doesn't want to be involved in anything that gets innocents hurt anymore - that's what he told me. I gave her the message, and told her that it would be just fine by me if we didn't have to work together anymore."  
  
"Sydney!" Broots was shocked. "You and Miss P have been friends forever..."  
  
"From where I stood, all I saw was her getting frustrated resulting in your getting seriously hurt and Jarod distancing himself permanently." Sydney sniffed again. "I don't associate willingly with bullies - it's bad enough I have to work FOR them."  
  
"But it was an accident!" the injured man insisted.  
  
"Maybe," Sydney hedged, not entirely ready to let go of his anger yet.  
  
"C'mon, Syd, you know her better than any of us. Do you honestly think that she would have deliberately put any of us in harm's way? Think about it. Every time one of us has gotten ourselves in a tight spot, she's been right there for us. Even at her worst, she wouldn't push me down the stairs. Geez - at least she deserved a little benefit of the doubt until you could talk to me, right?"  
  
When he put it that way, Sydney couldn't help but admit that the Miss Parker they knew now was far less likely to have deliberately caused anybody any harm. "I suppose," he said with a grimace as he wiped his finger beneath his nose in frustration. "And I suppose I was harder on her than I might have been because I was upset with Jarod's extreme response."  
  
Broots stretched out his hand, unable to move very well on the bed with his leg in a heavy plaster cast and suspended from a traction bar. "Give me the phone. Somebody needs to take her off the hook - and that somebody needs to be me, it seems..." He dialed the number from memory, then frowned in silence as the phone rang and eventually the answering machine picked up. "Miss Parker? This is Broots. I just wanted you to know that you didn't do anything wrong - that Debbie and Sydney were way out of line today. I hope I see you sometime tomorrow. I'll need your autograph on my cast to make it complete." He sighed. "See you tomorrow, I hope." He hung up and gazed up at Sydney with a worried expression. "When did she leave the Centre?"  
  
Sydney shook his head. "I have no way of knowing. I had to come back to Sim Lab to pick up Debbie, and then stop by your place to pick up some things for her to stay at my place until you come home, then we came straight here."  
  
"What time is it now?"   
  
Debbie peeked at her wristwatch. "A little after seven."  
  
Broots' ice-blues drilled holes into the psychiatrist. "Sydney, you need to go talk to her, make sure she's alright."  
  
"Broots..."  
  
"Look, humor me, willya?" The injured man insisted. "Drop Debbie off at our house - she can take care of herself at home until you come for her again - and make sure..." He hesitated, finding it hard to put his reservations into words. "I just got a really bad feeling about this, OK?"  
  
Sydney signed and nodded acquiescence. "OK, OK. C'mon, Debbie. Let's let your Dad get some beauty rest and get you back to your place so I can do his errand for him." The psychiatrist shook his head, and then a warning finger at the man in the bed. "And when Miss Parker tosses me out on my ear because she's just as mad at me now as I have been at her all day, I'll call and let you know all about it. You know what they say about things like that rolling downhill..."  
  
"You do that." Broots embraced his daughter quickly again. "I'll be waiting for your call. Before you leave, put the phone here on the bed where I can reach it, willya?"  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Miss Parker's Boxter was in its usual spot in front of her house, but the house itself was dark despite the relatively early hour. Sydney pulled up behind her car and frowned as he got out of his town car. Maybe Broots was right to worry. He'd deliberately been very hard on her the last time he'd seen her, having elicited a look of guilty acceptance of his diatribe being the only satisfaction he'd allowed himself at the time. Now her silence in the face of his harsh words resolved themselves into a clue that perhaps she HAD felt as badly about what had happened as any of them did - if not worse because she, too, felt the entire situation had been her fault. And evidently it hadn't been.  
  
Sydney walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell twice, then pounded heavily on her door when not a single sound of movement within responded to the noise. He moved to the window that looked in on her living room, only to find the draperies drawn tightly. He circled around to the back of the house, opened the screened back door and pounded once more on the back door itself with no response.   
  
With a sense of foreboding, he removed his jacket and wrapped it around his arm, then with a sharp blow smashed one of the panes of glass on the back door and reached through to disengage the locks and chains to let himself in. He switched on the overhead light in the kitchen, then followed the light out through the doorway into the short hallway that led to the living and dining rooms. Then he switched on the small chandelier over the table and used the pool of light to look around.   
  
There, on the coffee table, lay one empty bottle of Jack Daniels on its side next to another with only a small portion left in it. Sydney moved closer, then scowled in worry as he saw that, previously hidden by the empty bottle, was a small bottle of pills. "Oh, my God!" he breathed as he came into the room and saw Miss Parker's prone body sprawled loosely on the couch, an old-fashioned glass having slipped from her fingers to spill the remainder of its contents on the floor as she had lost consciousness. He reached down shaking fingers for the pulse point in her neck, then put himself in motion as he felt her pulse - sluggish, but still there.  
  
He glanced at the pill bottle and saw that they were sleeping pills. He sat down on the couch next to her and pulled her up into a sitting position and slapped none too gently at her face. "Parker, wake up! C'mon, Parker!"  
  
All he managed to get was a soft moan from her while she remained nearly boneless in his hold. Figuring he had little time to waste, he got to his feet and bent to pick her up in his arms and carried her to the bathroom. After arranging her so that she was kneeling and leaning forward over the rim of the bathtub, he arranged himself behind her so as to support her in that posture and then opened her mouth and thrust a finger down her throat until he felt her gag reflex kick in. Similar moves every time she seemed to recover kept her emptying her system of all the poisons in her stomach until at last she was bringing nothing up with her heaves any longer. The pills were already partially digested, which worried Sydney when he considered how many of them he could see in the mess.   
  
As soon as he was fairly certain that her stomach was empty, he caught her back against him and then laid her down on the cold bathroom floor and pulled out his cell phone to call an ambulance. He then called Sam to go take responsibility for Debbie and explain to her what was going on so she could tell her dad eventually. He then rinsed his hands at the sink and dampened a wash rag with cold water. Seating himself next to her on the floor, he pulled her limp body into his arms again and wiped gently at her face to cleanse it, calling her name frantically. The ambulance attendants found them in the bathroom still, and he insisted on riding in the ambulance with her to the hospital.   
  
Frantic with worry because she had yet to begin to come around at all, he needed to be restrained from following the gurney into the emergency room. He contented himself with pacing quickly back and forth in front of the emergency admitting desk, unwilling to call Broots yet without definitive word as to her condition. Eventually the admitting nurse's frustrated glare sent him in search of a seat from which he could see into the ER when the doors were flung open. When the nurse brought him the admission forms for Miss Parker to sign, he was almost grateful for the diversion, but quickly returned to his stares and occasional pacing.  
  
Finally, the emergency physician pushed through the doors, obviously in search of him. "How is she?" he demanded with no prelude at all.  
  
"Stable at the moment, but still unconscious. It's all up to her now," the doctor said simply with a small shake of his head. "You helped her to get rid of everything she hadn't already absorbed, which is probably the reason she's still alive at the moment. But from the EMT's report and her symptoms, she had a lot of alcohol in her system and most likely started drinking long before she decided to add the pills."  
  
Sydney's face fell, his distress obvious. "What is her prognosis, doctor?"  
  
The physician shrugged. "Like I said, it's up to her. We've stabilized her to the extent we can from the effects of the sleeping pills, but her blood alcohol is very high. We can only wait and see if she decides to wake up or..."  
  
"Can I see her?"  
  
The doctor opened the swinging doors and escorted Sydney to one of the curtained cubbies, where Miss Parker lay still and pale against the white sheets. "We'll be moving her to the medical floor as soon as we get a few more samples for lab tests."  
  
"I want to stay with her, be here when she decides to awaken."  
  
The doctor gazed at Sydney with a sympathetic expression. "Of course. Stay as long as you want - and try to talk to her. Sometimes patients in this condition respond to the sound of loved ones' voices."  
  
One of the emergency room nurses nudged a low stool inside the curtains for him to sit on, and he pulled it up close so that he could take one still hand in his and hang onto it tightly. "Come on, Parker. Wake up for me." He kissed her fingers softly.   
  
This was his fault. He was the one who had ripped into her without mercy at the Centre after Jarod's angry call. She could probably have coped eventually with the idea she'd been the cause of Broots' accident for as long as it would have taken until Broots himself cleared her of blame for his slipping. She might even have been able to handle, at least temporarily, Debbie's censure for what the girl believed had happened to her Dad until, again, he had had a chance to clear the air. She might even have managed to work her way through Jarod's anger and disappearing act until the truth came out and the Pretender found out what had actually happened. She could have handled any one of those events, maybe not well, but certainly in her own inimitable fashion.  
  
But all of those things had literally been dumped on her at once, then capped by his short, sweet and final rejection of her as a person and all they had ever had as friends and acquaintances over her entire life - and that had been the last straw. He had known instinctively that she was vulnerable to him in ways she was vulnerable to few others - and had used that against her very knowingly. The woman who had seen so many loved ones torn away in the past had, in a single day, had everyone she cared for in the present reject her completely. No wonder she'd tried this. She had found herself completely abandoned, rejected and alone, and had decided she couldn't live that way.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Parker," he choked, finding it difficult to voice his deeper shame. "It never even occurred to me that what happened to Broots was a complete accident. Don't leave me. Please. Come back now; wake up."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Sydney?"  
  
The psychiatrist roused himself at the sound of Debbie's voice, and straightened up from having leaned his head on the mattress next to the hand he still held clasped in his. He looked over at Miss Parker, who had yet to awaken, then over at Broots' young daughter. "Debbie?" He looked around, noting only in passing that there was muted sunlight pouring through the window next to him. "Have you told your Dad what happened?"  
  
Debbie came into the room, her face long and unhappy in the morning light. "Yeah, and he's really, REALLY angry at the both of us over this. I don't think I've EVER seen him this mad before." She moved to the other side of the bed. "Is she going to be alright?"  
  
Sydney shook his head. "I don't know, Debbie. She took an awful lot." He tried to keep his voice even, so as not to frighten her any more than necessary, but the level of stress in his voice communicated itself clearly.  
  
"C'mon, Miss Parker, wake up," Debbie urged gently with a hitch in her voice. She too took hold of the nearest hand and clasped it tightly. "We need you. My Dad is going to be very sad if you don't wake up soon." She fell silent, then, and watched Miss Parker's still face with tears running down her cheeks until she couldn't take it anymore. Then she sat down on the bed next to the prone woman and lay her head on the barely-moving chest and clutched the hand to her breast as she started to sob.  
  
Sydney looked over his shoulder and found Sam standing as if fixed against the back wall of the room. With a tip and nod of the head, Sydney signaled for the sweeper to take care of the broken young girl. With his free hand, he reached for Debbie's as she was directed past him toward the door. "I'll call you immediately when there's a change. When she begins to wake up. I promise."  
  
Then he found he had to release Miss Parker's hand for a while when Debbie threw herself into his arms and buried her face in his chest and sobbed bitterly. He comforted her as best he could for a long moment while Sam waited very patiently. Then, when it seemed as if the tears were ebbing, he pushed her from him and smoothed her hair with both hands before kissing her cheek. "You go on now and keep your Dad company - tell him I'm going to stay with Miss Parker, and that I'll be up later."  
  
Debbie nodded, then slipped her hand into Sam's and let him lead her from the room. Sydney turned back to the woman in the hospital bed and reclaimed the hand from where he'd put it on the mattress. "C'mon, Parker," he urged her gently. "You've slept all night and half-way into the morning. It's about time you put in an appearance for us now." He gazed at her sorrowfully. "For what it's worth, you've made your point. Debbie's nearly hysterical, and I'll admit you've managed to scare me more than I've been in a very long time. Enough already."   
  
He rolled his head on his neck and then his shoulders to work out the kinks from having spent the better part of the last half-day in the chair next to her bed. Then, without letting go of her hand, he stood and shifted himself to sit on the edge of her bed, much as Debbie had. "Miss Parker? Parker! Time to wake up now!" he called just a bit louder at her, cupping his hand at her cheek and patting it.   
  
This time, at long last, his efforts to rouse her got a response. Miss Parker's eyelids blinked just a bit more tightly closed as he patted her cheek, and there was a moan housed within an outgoing breath. Then with a more sustained intake of breath, she moved her head slightly and let her eyelids flutter weakly until they came open just a crack. Her eyes slowly focussed on the face of the man bending over her with a positively delighted smile of welcome. "Finally!! Good morning!" he greeted her, brushing his hand at the edge of her face to smooth her hair. "Welcome back."  
  
She blinked, then closed her eyes again - but not before the sadness and disappointment in their grey depths had dulled the edge of Sydney's smile. He swallowed hard, knowing that she was deliberately withdrawing rather than face him, and he patted her face again. "C'mon, you've slept enough for one day." He smoothed a hand very gently against her brow and added a tone of intimacy and pleading to his voice. "Come back to me, Parker. I miss you."  
  
The grey eyes opened slowly again, and her mouth worked dryly for a bit until, in a voice that sounded as if it hadn't been used in ages, she whispered slowly, "You should have just let me die..."  
  
"I was wrong, Parker - horribly, horribly wrong." Sydney's chestnut eyes had themselves become tortured, haunted, and the smile had died from his face. "I should never have said what I did to you. I could never have..." The words caught in his throat, but still he needed to say them. He had to tell her, no matter how hard it was, lest the chance never come again. "I care for you very much, you know, no matter what I said yesterday."  
  
"Then you're a fool, Sydney." She closed her eyes again, and tears slipped from beneath the eyelids. "I pushed Broots and he fell," she accused herself mercilessly in a grating whisper. "You were right..."  
  
"Parker, shut up for a minute and listen," Sydney put his fingers on her lips to still her words. "You need to hear this: Broots explained what happened last night, when he was lucid enough after the surgery to tell his story." His hand moved to cradle her face. "He's of the opinion that you saved him from a worse injury when you pushed at him, because he was already falling. You didn't do anything wrong, you didn't MAKE him fall."  
  
"What?" the lips moved, but there was no sound. The grey eyes were now very confused.  
  
Sydney found he couldn't meet her gaze any longer. "We all were very wrong to blame you, Parker. Debbie, Jarod, me - we didn't know the whole story, and we didn't give you the kind of benefit of the doubt we would have insisted you give us in a similar situation. And for what its worth, Broots is furious with us for not letting him explain first. We weren't being fair to you, and what we did certainly turned out to be far more harmful than anything you thought you did."   
  
"But..."   
  
"I know it will never be enough, but I do want you to know how sorry I am for what I said to you. I don't know that I will ever be able to forgive myself for what almost happened to you." Sydney was now carefully studying the stitches in the seams of his loafers. His voice grew very soft as he obvious was struggling to maintain his composure despite a corrosive guilt that was quite literally tearing him apart. "I can understand if you'd just as soon I left now. At least you heard me out and know the truth at last. Thank you for that."   
  
He looked up into her surprised eyes again for a very brief moment, and the pain of guilt for what had almost happened showed clearly in his face. He rose, bent forward and dropped a very soft kiss on her forehead, then cleared his throat self-consciously. "I'll let your doctor know you're awake now, and then go tell Broots that you're on the road to recovery at last, so he can stop breathing fire in all directions. And I'll have Sam bring Debbie by so she can give you her apology too." He gave her another guilty glance. "If you do forgive anybody, forgive Debbie, OK? She's too young to have to carry this kind of regret around for the rest of her life." He turned to leave.  
  
"Sydney..." Her voice was still weak - only a little more than a whisper - but its sound made him turn back to her as he got to the door. She lifted her hand from the mattress and stretched it out in his direction as if reaching for a lifeline. "Stay, please? Don't leave me - not again..."  
  
In light of all that had happened, there was no way he could refuse her. He returned to his seat and took her hand in his as he sat down, then brought his other hand forward and sandwiched hers between his two.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Hey Broots! Someone's here to see you..." Sydney's voice announced without warning.  
  
Broots' head swiveled towards the door of his room, and then his eyes widened in delight and surprise as Sydney slowly and carefully maneuvered Miss Parker's wheelchair around the empty bed and to a spot between the beds of the ward. "I understand I have you to thank for sending Syd to check on me," she said softly, still quite pale and wrapped warmly in the powder-blue terry robe. She took the hand Broots stretched out to her and held it tightly. "I'm so sorry, Broots..." Her voice cracked.  
  
"You. Didn't. Do. Anything. Wrong." Broots stated firmly, and squeezed her hand between his with every word. "I have you to thank for only having a broken leg, rather than a broken neck." His expression grew wry. "If anything, I should be the one who's sorry that this all happened in the first place because I'm such a klutz."  
  
"Miss Parker?"  
  
She looked across Broots' bed to where the 12 year old was standing, looking very nervous and unhappy. "It's OK, Debbie," she said softly. "I understand."  
  
"But I was so..." The girl looked down at her father; and when she looked up again, the tears were once more running down her cheeks. "I didn't mean..."  
  
"I know." Miss Parker glanced up into Sydney's face, noting that it reflected a deep and abiding guilt that Debbie was apparently still feeling very keenly. "I think we all managed to be a little less mindful or careful than we should have been, in one way or another, Debbie," she said gently. "A little less trusting than we could have."  
  
"I hope we've all learned our lesson," Broots grumbled with a scowl at both the psychiatrist behind the wheelchair and the girl at his side.  
  
"Yo, Scooby!" Miss Parker shook her head. "Down, boy!" she said gently yet firmly, squeezing Broots' hand in hers to punctuate her point and then letting go. She twisted in her chair towards Debbie and then held out her hand to her. "Come here," she invited with a soothing voice.  
  
The girl slipped away from her father's side and over to where Miss Parker could get a hold on her and pull her close. "Look," the woman said gently, "if you can let me off the hook for being impatient, I can let you off the hook for being protective. Deal?"  
  
Debbie nodded, then threw her arms around Miss Parker's neck with a muffled sob. Miss Parker pulled her into her lap in the wheelchair and held her close for a moment, then pushed the girl away to sit up straighter before the tears could turn contagious. "Now, no more tears, understood?" She glanced up and over her shoulder at Sydney. "And no more long faces from you either, Syd. Broots is recuperating, I'm on the mend, and all is right with the world again, or will be soon." Her face softened as she repeated her last words as much to herself as to anybody else. "All is right with the world again."  
  
She felt Sydney's hand land warmly on her shoulder and squeeze gently and Debbie settled her head against her other shoulder, all as she reclaimed her hold on Broots' hand. All of them had been to Hell and back in the last day. She had seen her world crumble completely, only to awaken from what she had intended as a final sleep to find it had put itself back together for her. More or less, anyway - certainly well enough to make it worth while living again.   
  
Sometimes second chances happened. As she leaned her cheek against Sydney's arm and cradled Debbie with one arm and held tightly to Broots' hand with her other hand, Miss Parker promised herself she wouldn't waste this one.   
  
  
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